Lightstreams Code Review: dApp Speed and Privacy

Lightstreams is a blockchain designed for decentralised applications that require speed and privacy when sharing content. It’s built on a modified version of the Ethereum blockchain and purports to solve the problem of data storage, which we’ve heard many times before (Swarm? IPFS?).

Although competition is good, there should be a clear differentiator in how you solve the problem, right?

Ok, on Ethereum, got it.

Not yet seeing what they are doing differently, let’s try to dig a bit more data. Data storage (DSSN) is a version of IPFS. So they cloned Ethereum and IPFS. Why don’t we just use Ethereum and IPFS? Let’s keep looking.

They are Proof of Authority. Ok, so at this point, I’m starting out demotivated, but let’s go through the code. I don’t like when people just offer me Ethereum or just offer me IPFS, give me a value-add over and above.

Cloning Ethereum makes perfect sense if you have a new idea to implement, but don’t just clone it for the sake of having a blockchain.

Let’s see what Lightstreams did;

We have lightstreams, permissioned-blocks, and go-ethereum. Let’s start with ethereum and see what they changed.

1 commit ahead, 773 behind. Great start.

Added a pending miner state. At least it wasn’t what I expected, which was just a rename, but nothing here, so let’s move on.

Nothing in permissioned blocks.

Just a basic solidity contract. Github here.

Lightstreams Network Code Review Conclusion:

Nothing here, you can build this yourself on IPFS and a private Ethereum network.

Disclaimer: Crypto Briefing code reviews are performed by auditing what is on display in the master branch of the repo’s made available. This was performed as an educational review and any comments in the article are the opinion of the writer. It is normal for code to change rapidly, hence we timestamp our code reviews so that they present a snapshot at a moment in time. Information contained herein should not be used as any comment or advice on the project as a whole.

Lightstreams Network Code Review Timestamp: May 18th, 2018 at 17:33 GMT